The UN Sending Election Observers To...NEW HAMPSHIRE? I Thought This Was A Joke...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

And you give nothing at all to support this story, not by reference to the OECD 'story' and not by reference to reality.

William,

Of course there is reality.

OECD = not USA organization.

That's reality.

And it wants to set controls over USA citizens on USA soil. To make sure USA citizens follow USA law (at first).

Cancer (in the sense I mean) by its very nature.

This is not really rocket science.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

I thought of a better simile than the Brussels sprout one:

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

We have a free press in the USA to monitor elections. We don't need foreign bodies doing that.

Look here, for instance:

New Undercover Video: Did Congressman's Son Commit Voter Fraud?
October 24, 2012
David Brody
CBN

James O'Keefe has struck again. O'Keefe is the guy who broke the big ACORN scandal with his undercover video reporting.

Now, he's out with a video that may land a Congressman's son in trouble for voter fraud. Watch below as Patrick Moran, the son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (and the Field Director for his father's campaign), is caught on tape talking to an undercover reporter about how to allegedly cast ballots deceitfully for registered voters.

Here's the video in that story:



Sometimes you get this kind of crap on the other side, too. I recall a recent story of a Republican guy throwing away voter registrations. I think it was in Georgia, but I would have to look it up.

We USA citizens know what to do with these folks. And we do it.

That's why our system works, warts and all.

We don't need outside governing bodies trying to "help us" by polluting the power struggles to nudge them in the direction of one candidate or the other.

What makes one of those jerks any better or objective than the USA citizen informed by the USA press?

They are inherently better people than us? They are more moral? What?

I'll say what...

What a crock...

Michael

[william.scherk]

If the OCSE should have no possibility of election-monitoring in the USA, then the OCSE should have no possibility of monitoring elections in other members. In other words, no election observation in Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia, Montenegro.

Do you support this?

Absolutely.

And so ... there should absolutely be no 'foreign' observers of any election, anywhere, ever. Despite agreements between the countries.

Again with the murky use of "They." In this instance 'people from outside the USA checks and balances' you say use a different 'playbook.' I do not know if you are talking about the members of the OSCE. When you use these general pronouns, it is rarely clear who you are talking about. "They" adhere to a different story? Well, what is that story, Michael? Where have you read that story?

It's not murky at all for this topic.

USA citizen = us.

Not USA citizen = they.

This is beyond evasive. I see a jumble of characters all assigned the word THEY. When queried, you just delete and blow off the questions. I just do not understand. Murky pronouns, undeclared 'stories' attached to them, and no coherent argument.

Now the OSCE is lumped in with some more murk. The USA citizens of some progressive document is assigned the same identity as the OSCE non-citizens. In the book you point to but do not cite, we expect there is some discussion of election monitoring?

Is there, Michael? Have you read the book you wave at? Does it support any of your points?

Here's a Story:

Once upon a time there was a group of people. We call these people Them. They are legion. Some are from the USA, some from bad places. Some are guineas. Some vote. Anyway, they started a cancer called Progressivism. They gave it to good people, by nudging them with the UN. Then the cancer ate away at the story of America. Then some other guys came along. They are not the same Them, but other guys. They had a story. It was a bad story even about elections or torture or sumpin'. Then Adam said kill the fuckers. And I said, no, make fun of them. And then there was a story, in a book or somewhere. A narrative. And then the bad cancer horse gift blew up and almost killed each other, but I figured it out. They are crooks. They do not share the story. They do. They the other guy cancer torture somepin' Romney.

The end.

Edited October 24, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Have you read the book you wave at? Does it support any of your points?

William,

Damn. You found me out.

I've only read about half of it.

But based on my incomplete reading, may I recommend it to you? It's a good faith recommendation. Either you will love it or it will send chills up your spine. (It's hard to tell with you. I do know you enough to know you will not be indifferent to it.)

Chapter 5, "Choice Architecture" is particularly enlightening. Especially Thaler's concept of "padding the path of least resistance."

There's all kinds of advice so far on making people do shit they normally wouldn't do by choice. I expect it to continue, but I may be mistaken. After all, I am a little people with real problems when it comes to understanding what I read.

Here's an idea. Why not have someone more enlightened than I am think for me?

Now that's a hell of an idea. Imagine the mental energy I could save...

Oh wait...

That seems to be the theme of this book...

Hmmmm...

Oh, yeah. Another thing. I've also watched a few hour-or-longer lectures by Thaler on YouTube. (Nothing by Sunstein so far.) One was at the London School of Economics. But video lectures probably don't count as knowledge on the gotcha over substance game.

Michael

[william.scherk]

Have you read the book you wave at? Does it support any of your points?

Damn. You found me out.

I've only read about half of it.

But based on my incomplete reading, may I recommend it to you? It's a good faith recommendation. Either you will love it or it will send chills up your spine. (It's hard to tell with you. I do know you enough to know you will not be indifferent to it.)

I took a look inside the book at your Amazon link, hoping to find out what they might have to say about elections. The gist of the book is fun and intriguing, and the rule of thumb (Automatic and Reflective 'systems') makes sense. On elections, I mean to look up this reference (from page 20):

When writing this book we are (mostly) using our Reflective Systems, but sometimes ideas pop into our heads when we are in the shower or taking a walk and not thinking at all about the book and these are probably coming from our Automatic Systems. (Voters, by the way, seem to rely primarily on their Automatic System . A candidate who makes a bad first impression, or who tries to win votes by complex arguments and statistical demonstrations may well run into trouble.*)

[The note is this:] * It is possible to predict the outcome of congressional elections with frightening accuracy simply by asking people to look quickly at pictures of the candidates and say which one looks more competent. These judgements, by students who did not know the candidates, forecast the winners of the election two-thirds of the time!

Oh, yeah. Another thing. I've also watched a few hour-or-longer lectures by Thaler on YouTube. (Nothing by Sunstein so far.) One was at the London School of Economics. But video lectures probably don't count as knowledge on the gotcha over substance game.

Oh, pshaw. Fiddlesticks. "Gotcha over substance game"? What is this -- something trotted out when one is Gotched? Does this presume that Substance accrues to you or LSE or Thaler via some ineffable quality while not telling us what the substance was?

Touting videos is something I do (not a lot) and have no problem with. If one wants another person to follow one thoughts or comment on an idea, a video is as good a place to start as any. A start, not a finish, for me, though. Some videos can appear convincing in and of themselves at first glance, because a strong argument is made and the criticisms to that argument are dealt with transparently -- references are given by slides or notes or verbal citations, and the literature, if there is any, is mentioned. A speech in itself is able to be transformed into text and then given the same critical attention as any other document.

Sometimes videos are 'pop' presentations or stand-alone presentations where there is no particular critical framework designed-in -- like some TED talks that have no particular scholarly pretensions. This is great -- they are introductions to ideas, and are not be treated as state-of-the-art or conclusive this or that. Idea-fests. Good fun.

Of course, some videos are worth little on some subjects when they are empty of consideration of any counterargument, and misrepresent or evade critical challenges made to the actor/announcer's theses or findings.

Anyhow, "gotcha over substance game." I don't get it. I hope I rarely play simple gotcha for base motives. Gotcha can be satisfying now and again. When someone makes an obvious blunder (like me mis-citing Adam in place of MikeE) or other (factual claims made of fudge and wishes) then gotcha is its own reward for all parties: correction.

Michael, our epistemological challenges overlap all the time. In some areas of this huge world we each watch over, one or the other of us has more depth of knowledge. For you over me, that would be your world of music (a pointless aside, but I must say of those parts of your life that I might pine for or even envy your talents over my own are those of the years in concerts, recording, conducting, arranging, touring, dark-siding. These are the stories I relish from you, the darker more direct stories of achievement and corruption and love and life and danger. O Globo. And as I relish them, there is no way I could touch these stories in terms of truth, accomplishments, insights and punch. I would not even criticize them in least aspect, because you are a good writer who is his own best critic).

That is not the only place where you have uncontested strengths and depth of knowledge much superior to mine.

Where we align, I should think, is on the necessity of the reflective approach (in tanden with our emotional valences) to matters of fact, identification, integration, comprehension. Not on narrative or meta-narrative perhaps, but on the dogwork of checking facts and getting things straight, naming things and groups of things accurately, checking for black swans, that sort of thing.

You needn't think of me as a Progressive zombie on some matters, then. I am not trying to be your boogeyman, not in any other way than I want to be a boogeyman of reason. If I am challenging your arguments strongly sometimes it could be to your benefit, or the benefit of your writing and persuasive abilities. If I challenge your lack of specifics it is only to the benefit of your story and the clarity of your arguments. Them arguments and cancer/hitler arguments are weak, unreflective.

On back to the subject. I have nothing but a cynical bemusement towards the UN most of the time. A supranational convenience and an oddity, it has military forces under its command as peacekeepers around the world, sometimes dug in place for forty years, and it has a magic garden of acronyms and embroidered missions and commissions and directorates and yadda yadda on various subjects from the extremely boring and dire to the pellucid and tragic. There is a UN commission since disbanded or not for every freaking international conflict or question since day zero for the UN, mandates and treaties up the gazoo, a millions spiderwebs of more or less flabby directives and procedures. It has five grim-faced mandarins from the Big Five who actually run its business.

The ability to look into elections is one I want for the West (as it expands its borders as I hope it continues to do). I want detailed reports on Turkish elections (supervised by the EU), I want data from the recent Belarus election, and if they come by agreement with the ACRONYM, I will take it. We in the OSCE (we fifty-six nations) have found a treaty-like way to get the right to look closely at the other's democratic business and machinery. I do not see a downside to this intelligence from a Western point of view. In the years since the OSCE has done its business, see the numbers of states who have joined after demonstrating their democratic credentials (from Estonia to Malta) and the extent of the range of Western-style democracy to the East. NATO gains, solid alliances. At the edges, pretenders like Belarus and Kazakhstan against real Free World nations like the UK and Germany and Spain.

If you want (like the Texas attorney-general) to bar OSCE monitors (all two of them, one fiendish German and one evul Brit) in Austin Texas, then he willl and he did and they responded and the rest will happen and it won't be worthy of frothing over. American elections are marvels of transparency and money, rules and procedures. That some Americans want to pull a gun or deportation order on election monitors (it should matter from which country?) is sad news to me, a reflection of emotionalism, nationalism, needless and irrational.

Free, transparent elections are the norm here (in Canada and USA), and give grand lessons to all lesser nations. I just do not get a snapping turtle reaction (the lizard brain, the SuperStory, the gunplay and corpse-dellvery of Adam's jokey outburst?).

When you do not want us to inspect elections in foreign lands, that's a different kind of turtle story.

I can maybe continue this thread with extremely boring reports from other election-monitoring missions, which I actually do find fascinating and dire. We who are the beacons of all that is rich and free and luscious in every aspect of life, the West, we cannot expose our democratic machinery? Why not? It is immeasurably cleaner and better conducted than the other.

So, Michael if it just comes down to you do not want reciprocal election-monitoring agreements, I still do not see the grounds beyond the automatic systems reaction and a revulsion for Them.

Edited October 25, 2012 by william.scherk

[MrBenjamatic]

2:18 -2:43 says it all from the maggots mouth: without the help of the US alone, the UN is NOTHING. If they were booted, they would die off. The US is obviously the life blood of the global tyrants and they want to destroy it... hmmm wonder why? (sarcasm). It stands to logic that the UN can't steal (man-made) values from countries that bridle and forbid production of values.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

If you want to align with my thinking and actually discuss ideas, stop taking metaphors literally, ahh... I mean only when you find it convenient. Sometimes you are good with metaphors and sometimes you nitpick them as if they were literal. Like cancer cells, if you see what I mean.

Literal is good, but abstract and symbolic is good, too.

Here. Look at metaphor. I'm not coming at metaphors from a conservative perspective. Here's the grandaddy, a died-in-the-wool Progressive with a capital P, and, I admit, one hell of a good thinker about the cognitive role of metaphors in human thinking: Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

You don't have to ask whether I read this one because I'll tell you. I haven't. I just got it a few days ago from Amazon, but I have read enough peripheral material around it to have ordered it. Frankly, I'm salivating to find the time to get into it. And I'm salivating over another book he wrote (with Mark Turner): More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, but I haven't ordered that one yet. (Too much life and too little time to fit it in.)

The guy is a snake in prostituting his scientific credibility for partisan politics--on top of being a political bonehead (I actually bought and read The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic by Lakoff with Elisabeth Wehling, which is just as boneheaded as they come), but if you can look past that, he's a genius. There's a lot to learn from his ideas.

Which reminds me of another book I just finished reading and intend to immediately read a second time--on top of taking lots and lots of notes. (I was lucky enough to find this at the library and, as it just came out, I have to return it soon, so I have to be quick if I want to avoid buying it for a while.) Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future by Jonah Sachs. This guy is a marketer who habitually makes Progressive viral YouTube videos--ones that go into the millions and millions of views. You might have heard of some of his videos: Meatrix, The Story of Stuff and some others. Here is his YouTube channel if you are interested in looking at his video work: Free Range Studios.

(Hang with me, now. I'll be getting back to election monitoring...)

Sachs has written what I believe to be one of the most important books of this century on story (and myth) and its social impact. And I believe it will become a classic. It's a book on marketing, but it far, far transcends the field of marketing. I am worlds apart from Sachs on his politics, but I find his method to be the best I have come across. Not for selling goods, but for creating the stories and myths that sell the very philosophy of life that binds together societies. Not to mention for fiction writing. (And, yes, for selling products.)

And guess what? He also works in the same manner I do, learning from top people, even ones he disagrees with. If I ever meet him one day, I am pretty sure we are going to get along quite nicely and drive each other nuts at the same time. He started his book with an analysis of the similarities between The Story of Stuff and Glenn Beck's career. That's right. Glenn Beck. Look at just one thing he said about Beck (pp. 21-22):

Beck owes his tremendous success to the fact that-like the great storytellers of the ancient oral tradition-he has constructed for his followers a powerful model of how the world works. Like the ancient myths that have built empires, the narratives Beck weaves work together to provide explanation, meaning, and a compelling story in a world that has come to feel increasingly alienating and chaotic to those who follow them. Once you speak the language of Beck’s mythology, full of thrilling heroes and terrifying villains, any event-past, present or future-can be explained through it.

. . .

Beck is a master marketer, successful all out of proportion to his category, if any category can be defined for him. By 2010, he was personally earning about $13 million a year from his books and magazines, $10 million from radio, $3 million from events, and (before his run on Fox ended) $2 million from TV. On an average day, more DVRs recorded Beck’s show than any other cable news program. All this, and he was a central figure in the Tea Party movement that drove Republicans to victory in 2010. If you think of Beck as a newscaster or political figure, you're missing the point.

“I'm a brand,” he told Forbes magazine. “I don't think you can make an impact in today's world without being ubiquitous.” Few marketers have managed to be as ubiquitous as Glenn Beck. And precisely because he is a brand, the lessons of Beck’s success have applications to all kinds of brands from retail goods to social causes.

To Glenn's discredit, Sachs asked him to lunch for an interview and he won't meet with the guy. But that's neither here nor there.

If you want to find out what I mean by story of the USA and one of the reasons I am vehemently against changing that story, take a look at this book.

btw - When Sachs talks about mythology, he means something quite specific as a deeply meaningful cognitive tool, not just a bunch of cute stories. He even calls himself a modern mythmaker. He didn't talk about Ayn Rand, but her novels are myths in his sense. (Great myths, too, which is one of the reasons they just won't go away whereas most of the popular fiction of her time is long forgotten.)

The Progressives figured out a long time ago that if you change the story people adhere to, you change society. That's why they made such a concerted effort to infiltrate the educational system and rewrite the history books. There's no way to put a new story in place until the average person can spit on the heroes of the old story, which is exactly what they did in the didactic materials.

This is a really long discussion and you might think I am rambling since you seem to want me to opine about a group and process I believe should not exist in the first place, but the problem is I don't have much of an opinion of the difference between, say, cat poop and dog poop. And that is precisely what I think about the UN and an outside agency monitoring USA elections for voter fraud.

However, I want to tie this discussion to something that might be more meaningful to you. So here's what you wrote to kind of parody the story idea I was talking about:

Once upon a time there was a group of people. We call these people Them. They are legion. Some are from the USA, some from bad places. Some are guineas. Some vote. Anyway, they started a cancer called Progressivism. They gave it to good people, by nudging them with the UN. Then the cancer ate away at the story of America. Then some other guys came along. They are not the same Them, but other guys. They had a story. It was a bad story even about elections or torture or sumpin'. Then Adam said kill the fuckers. And I said, no, make fun of them. And then there was a story, in a book or somewhere. A narrative. And then the bad cancer horse gift blew up and almost killed each other, but I figured it out. They are crooks. They do not share the story. They do. They the other guy cancer torture somepin' Romney.

The end.

That's not the story of America. Not even as a parody. If you want to talk about the myths behind American society, you have to start over in Europe with some very poor people and some very Greedy Rulers. The poor people got sick and tired of starving to death, being beaten and so forth, including being treated as kooks for their beliefs. So rather than fight a fight they had no chance of winning, they told the rulers to take a hike and took off to new lands--taking the Biblical story of Moses going to the Promised Land with them.

Some of the rulers financed them with aims at getting oodles of returns on investment, but that didn't work out as well as they thought. They had no idea how important the myth of Moses was to the outcasts. And they were living under their own myths of inherited superiority. So their milk-the-new-lands-for-all-they're-worth idea kind of fell apart after a while. To the outcasts the Greedy Rulers left behind were the Pharaohs of the Moses story.

Once these different groups of outcasts got to America, they did what they saw the Greedy Rulers back home do to each other. They had no other model. so they repeated what they knew. They conquered weaker people and took possession of the land they were on. But these were outcasts, not replicas of the Greedy Rulers they left behind. They also wanted to stay in the Promised Land and in God's favor (as they perceived it), so they fought and bickered with each other, and fought and bickered and fought and bickered until they came up with a plan whereby man could rule himself. He didn't need the Greedy Ruler appointed by God or anyone else.

And they did it.

That is the story of America. This country is an idea at the core, not real estate owned by Greedy Rulers with subjects living on it.

This kind of myth is handed down generation after generation until it goes into what Thaler would call the "Automatic System," (I don't use this language, but I mention it since that is one of the things you gleaned from the book). It's not an exact fit, but can you see that a subconscious worldview myth is close enough to make a huge difference when a person goes into the voting booth?

(These Nudge dudes prefer stuff a little more covert and manipulative, stuff they can use to zap people immediately. The joke on them is that story can do that far better than their NLP knockoffs mixed with neuroscience can, but maybe they don't go in that direction because they can't tell a story worth the sole of a beggar's shoe.)

Later the Progressives came. Since the outcasts had worked their asses off to create wealth, they sent their kids to European colleges. These came back with some very odd ideas about the outcasts actually being a form of Greedy Rulers themselves. And they were shamed because they felt the class of their fathers only got their wealth from stealing off the people they conquered. Indians, black slaves, Chinese to lay the railroad, even factory workers. A new Greedy Ruler enemy class was born.

And some science got thrown in where humans can improve the human species scientifically. (With Progressives in charge, of course.) We can get rid of Greedy Rulers by programming and the... er... suboptimal folks as well. Hurray!

We saw where that went with eugenics, which led to Nazi death camps.

Whatever.

Now it's not eugenics. It's nudge. it's always something with Progressives to try to engineer the cattle up to the level of proper humans, even it it has to be against their will.

But, there are actually some things in this Progressive narrative that needed to be addressed (like slavery, the genocide of Indians, etc.). That did not mean the early settlers were social parasites along the lines of the inherited nobilities of Europe, though. They were hard workers and producers.

Yes, they made some awful choices, but they made some stunningly great ones, too. And they produced a system that created wealth the likes of which the world had never seen up to that time. And the living idea of freedom. Not in theory, but in reality. One both you and I enjoy today.

This is the person Ayn Rand defended and this is the person the Progressive narrative tries to pretend is not important. (She added reason, but I'm dealing with gut level archetypes right now.)

But what about the actual Greedy Ruler types? The ones who feel entitled to an unearned inherited superiority over the cattle of humanity? What about them? Well, they didn't go away. And new ones are born every day. Our species seems to be afflicted with people who get the Greedy Ruler bug. Here in the USA, some of them go into the conservative side and some go Progressive, each adhering to the respective storyline of the respective side. One makes war and the other "engineers" humanity. Blech.

The one thing they all agree on, though, is that the government has to get bigger and they have to be on the inside helping to call the shots. They want pull, not merit.

And what's stopping them for taking over altogether?

A story.

A simple story.

That original outcast following Moses to the Promised Land (as a myth) is the story of what America is all about. That is the story that will not die. That is the story that is blocking the Progressives (and more recently back-room dealing conservatives) from setting up and instituting their own version of a Greedy Ruler society.

Then, here come these boneheads from the UN--which is full of Greedy Ruler types and just plain old garden variety bloody dictators--wanting to oversee the elections here.

Here in the Promised Land of all places! What in hell are they thinking?

Don't you see how this would be galling to people who hold the American story dear? We fought wars to get rid of those bastards and here they come trying to sneak back in.

No way, José.

Do you see something else, too? Do you see the elements in the story I told off the top of my head that are totally missing in yours? If not, you should. This is critical gut level stuff that moves masses. And I didn't even get into the heroes journey and a whole bunch of other stuff.

(And yes, you can test this stuff and get repeatable results if you wish.)

OK, I rambled a bit, but it's late and, as Mark Twain once wrote, I don't have time enough to make it short. So rambled it is. I'll do better in another post.

But do you start to get the gist of where I am coming from? Or is my argument to you still just a kooky caricature of a Bible 'n Guns yahoo who denies evolution 'cause he ain't no monkey? (With the exception of music stories that you respect?)

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As an added thought, something just occurred to me.

What story did Martin Luther King use over and over? One that produced results and changed society--to the point we elected a black man for President a half a century later? And why is there a memorial of him and not other black leaders among the Washington DC mall giants of USA history?

To me it's simple. He did the Moses leading followers to the Promised Land myth. He told it. He lived it. He changed the world with it.

There is nothing more American than that.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I don't see what the big deal is here. We send election observers to other countries, so this is kind of like when your mother ate a Brussels sprout to convince you to try one too. And she goes "hmmm, good", you try a bite, and then you feel you can never fully trust her again, but now I digress.

The observers are going to go back to their countries better trained in how to conduct elections, one hopes. Are we paying them to come here? I assume not. Do they have some kind of veto over the results?

They should send Jimmy Carter to make sure the voting is fair.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

All kinds of election observers work the polls. As long as you do not interfere illegally, you have the right to do so and to challenge any elector on valid grounds. It can be dicey in a corrupt place like Cook County: you might be denied, physically prevented, and then have to sue after the fact. The right exists nonetheless and many organizations and individuals exercise it.

That said:

"Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott warned international election observers not to come closer than 100 feet from a polling place; otherwise, they could be subject to criminal prosecution. The warning was addressed to a group of international observers who intend to monitor polls. The OSCE, an UN affiliated organization of observers, was concerned about voter ID issues among other things. From the article: '“The Texas Election Code governs anyone who participates in Texas elections — including representatives of the OSCE,” Abbott wrote. “The OSCE’s representatives are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place. It may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance. Failure to comply with these requirements could subject the OSCE’s representatives to criminal prosecution for violating state law.”'"

From Slashdot, pointing to this:

Project Vote Executive Director Michael Slater on Wednesday issued a statement addressing Attorney General Abbott’s warning to international elections observers. “America stands for democracy. It appears that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is ashamed of Texas’s voting rights record or he would welcome observers with open arms. Instead, he is threatening them and attacking groups that are working to ensure that every eligible Texan is allowed to vote.

http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-elections/international-observers-draw-warning-ag/

[MrBenjamatic]

I wish they would come to Canada! The stuff the Tories did last election was not kosher!

I second your concern for Adam, or third it, following Bill. Jeez, Adam.

I know you are a socialist. I wonder if you know that the UN are socialists too?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

So long as I mentioned the Moses myth as part of the American psyche, let me mention one that Jonah Sachs highlights. It's from Winning the Story Wars (link earlier in this thread) and is self-explanatory (p. 70):

Just as the Genesis story teaches a man to rule over his wife, it’s also pretty clear about how mankind should deal with the Earth: Subdue it. As soon as our Pilgrim forefathers first beheld the marvelous expanse of seemingly uninhabited forests that would be their new home, Genesis 1:28 was instantly reactivated. To people coming from a crowded, deforested European continent, this was like a return to the Garden and a chance to carry out God’s commandment anew. The idea of a virgin wilderness awaiting human hands has been at the heart of American mythology ever since.

So, from the beginning, American heroes have been pioneers, hunters, and cowboys—Davy Crockett, Johnny Appleseed, Annie Oakley, John Wayne, Rambo—men and women willing to step out of the safety of civilization and onto the frontier, clearing the next patch of ground for the use of civilized people. Our stories from Westerns to space epics take place on the frontier because that’s where our core Genesis-based mythology can be lived out.

In the language of the frontier myth, leaving nature unexploited by human hands is not just a waste; it’s an act of immorality, a rebellion against God’s commandments.

Can ya' tell that the dude likes environmentalism.

He could have framed that better by using more agenda-neutral words, but regardless, I think he's onto something. It's easy to see the moral parallels between the Genesis story and American settlers. They're all over the place.

And I believe Rand carried the broad strokes of this myth in her heart. Her background would have ensured deep familiarity with it from infancy. Other than the idea of God, which she objected to, I believe the moral implications of the story Sachs delineated aligned quite nicely with her growing commitment to reason, so there was no urge to combat the emotional tugs it gave off. After all, you can only subdue the earth by using reason to deal with the elements. Rain dances are colorful, but not very effective.

This is why I believe Rand talked trash about American Indians. In this sense, they were immoral because they were not conquering the land with man-made stuff. Thus, getting rid of them to make way for the "civilized people" from Europe was rational to her.

Her enemies have accused her of veiled bigotry here, but it's nothing more than the story. If the Indians had been white and the "civilized people," say, Africans, I believe she would have found it rational to get rid of the white savages to make way for the black productive civilization.

I don't like to channel Rand, but this case is interesting to think about.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

And what color would she be?

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I know you made a quip, but I'm not the only one who notices this bent of Rand's. Below is a quote from one of Rand's more intelligent critics, Gary Weiss, in Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul.

Notice that Weiss tried to pigeonhole Rand as becoming more Jewish in an ethnic sense near the end of her life, but he almost sounds perplexed by her lack of interest in Jewish things in her support of Israel.

To me, I see the message in the ancient Judeo-Christian myths speaking to her, especially the one about the morality of developing new lands. In the myth this is portrayed as obeying God's command, but subconscious messages in myths do not get hung up on logical details and consistency. The good guys in the myth are the ones who develop the land. The bad guys are the ones who occupy it and do not develop it. You can easily cut God out of the picture with the rational part of the mind and keep that moral message in the subconscious. That's the way story works in general.

(You can also cut that message out with the rational part of your mind and keep in obeying God as the moral thing to do, say, if your purpose is to promote doing God's will. That's the way story works, too. That's why you constantly find that the same story can appeal to different people of widely different thinking for completely different reasons. It's instructive to know the process of how this works.)

In fact, when you look at the characters and events in Rand's fiction from a mythological lens, there are many parallels to Judeo-Christian myths. Just look at Ayn Rand's favorite painting right here on OL for a clear example of the influence. But that's another topic for another day.

Obviously Weiss does not see the connection with the Genesis myth's subconscious message going all the way back to Rand's childhood culture, but from his writing, I'm pretty sure he would embrace it if it were pointed out to him.

Or maybe not. I also get the feeling he likes to focus on Rand's Jewishness more as an ethnic thing and prefers to seek opportunities to inject it into her thinking. But he's got journalistic standards enough to let the facts speak. That's why Rand's explicit statements kind of bewilder him. Notice his change in tone after commenting on otherness being what Rand liked about Israel. He even put the word "liked" in italics. From that point on, I get a mental image of him scratching his head with an expression of disbelief on his face at the extent of what he perceives as a blatant inconsistency. (In other words, Progressive Conceited Snark Mode. )

Here is Weiss (pp. 125-127, and I included the footnotes to show his sourcing):

… late in her life she achieved the kind of epiphany on something she suppressed all her life--her Jewish identity. This embrace of her heritage was, I think, reflected in the pro-Israel position that she took publicly in the 1970s--and privately much earlier, Barbara Branden told me, perhaps as early as the late 1950s.

Rands flight from her ethnic background was one of the most conspicuous aspects of her early life. She came from a family that was secular by Russian-Jewish standards, only celebrating the holiday of Passover--the Jewish festival that, perhaps, comes closest to Objectivist ideology by commemorating the Children of Israel's exercise in rational self-interest (and a Galt-like strike action) by fleeing Egypt.6 One gets the impression that she was anxious to de-Judaize herself, and to not associate with what might be described as Jewish concerns. She didn't fool the immigration officers when she arrived in the United States--the ship's manifest listed her as "Hebrew"7--but she immediately Anglicized her name, which was recognizably Jewish, and she did not reveal her birth name (Alyssa Rosenbaum) except to a select few.8

Her strenuous effort to distance herself from her heritage was evident in a number of ways, from her atheism to her adoration of Henry Ford to her opposition to U.S. involvement in the war against the Nazis. Her published journals and letters show Rand uttering not a word on the subject of Israel during the pre-independence period or the first years of its existence. Yet something changed in the early 1970s, perhaps because of the Soviet Union's hostility toward the Jewish state. She might have privately supported Israel before then, as Barbara Brandon recalled, but only in the 1970s did she become an outspoken admirer of Israel and a fierce critic of its Arab enemies. Being Rand, she expressed her position in a way that was calculated to make everyone but Objectivists feel uncomfortable.

Israelis take pains to emphasize the Jewish people's nativity to the region, their roots as confirmed by archaeology and the Bible (and, more recently, DNA analysis). Efforts by anti-Zionists to delegitimize Israel always portray Israel as a foreign body lodged in the gullet of the Middle East. Yet that alleged otherness was what Randall liked about Israel. She didn't give a hoot about the Biblical roots or the nation for the painstakingly accumulated archaeological evidence of Jewish habitation through the ages. She never traveled to Israel to participate in mystical rituals like praying at the Wailing Wall. No, what appealed to her about Israel was not that it was the fulfillment of three-thousand-year-old promises made in religious texts whose validity she did not recognize, or that Israel was a refuge for persecuted Jews or Holocaust survivors, but that it was an outpost of Western civilization.

In response to a question at the Ford Hall forum in Boston in 1973, Rand described Arabs as among "the least developed cultures" and said that they "are practically nomads." She called their culture "primitive" and said that they "resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent." When "civilized man [are] fighting savages," she said, "you support the civilized men."9

. . . . .

6. Interview with Eleanora Drobysheva, McConnell, 100 Voices. 13.

7. Entry for "Alice Rosenbaum." Manifest for the S.S. De Grasse. February 19, 1926, accessed via Ancestry.com.

8. Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, 56-57.

9. Mayhew, Ayn Rand Answers, 96.

People constantly want to see bigotry and ethnic concerns in Rand. But the secret is in the myth...

Food for thought.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

In reference to Weiss' quote.

Whatever else one might think of Islam, one should not neglect its vital historical role in reviving the intellectual life of Europe. In Islam the bulk of surviving Aristotle Ouvre was kept and re-exported back to Europe. Also in the Islamic domains vital mathematical and scientific discoveries were made. Algebra was invented in the the Islamic domains, for example. The Greeks had little that was even close (with the exception of Archimedes).

Aristotle was as big a star to the Muslims (in their early historical period) as he became to the Catholics.

Islam has gone dark since the 13th century but they had their day of brightness.

Rand show almost as much ignorance of history as she does of science and mathematics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

In fairness, science and math advanced hugely during Rand's lifetime - as did the study of history also. But there really is no excuse for her ignoring or misrepresenting - or just not knowing - so much of world history up to the time of her own birth.

Of course, it was intellectual history she was mainly concerned with, but in considering it she dropped a lot of context.

[william.scherk]

Get the fuck out of my country - shot the mother fuckers if they appear at your local polling place.

No need to kid about murder. A threat of arrest (from an arm of the same state that invited them) can do the trick.

Iowa warns international observers of arrest

Iowa has joined Texas in warning international election observers of possible criminal prosecution if they violate state laws and get near polling places on Election Day.

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz — like Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott last week — on Tuesday threatened Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe election observers with arrest if they came within 300 feet of a polling place’s entrance, in violation of state law. (In Texas, it’s 100 feet.)

[ ... ]

My office met with two delegation representatives last week to discuss Iowa’s election process, and it was explained to them that they are not permitted at the polls,” Schultz said in a statement. “Iowa law is very specific about who is permitted at polling places, and there is no exception for members of this group.”

The OSCE — comprised of 56 countries, including the United States — is chiefly a crisis mediation and conflict resolution group in Europe, Asia and North America. Since 2002, the organization’s poll watchers have observed six U.S. elections, without incident, said Janez Lenari, the OSCE’s director for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Lenari wrote, “The threat of criminal sanctions against OSCE/ODIHR observers is unacceptable. The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.”

How to make friends and influence people!

Cheers for America and Iowa. Iowa elections are a model for the world. Want to look closely at the model? You will be jailed. All hail reason bound tightly by emotion.

The foreigners who would otherwise be shot, beaten, body-parts FedExed? In Iowa two citizens of Americas allies, from Denmark (marxist torture hellhole) and Macedonia (religious terrorist state and EU/NATO candidate)

What remains clear is that although the US allies in Texas (Germany/UK) and in Iowa (Denmark/Macedonia) have been purged from the list of those allowed as observers, the Kazakhstanis (from that meadow of democracy and Russian cosmodromes) are still expected to do their dangerous 'looking' at polls in Phoenix Arizona, Jefferson City Missouri, and Lansing Michigan.

I call on Ohio patriot Dennis May to start his gun acquisition programme early, and not wait till the day after the Apocalypse, and to get on the blower with other patriots near the enemy actions (Brant Gaede leaps to mind), to make sure that if the government won't prevent these foreign intrusions on soveignty, the devoted servants of freedom certainly will.

There on a hill in swampy, battered New Jersey, Adam can stop cursing Christie for praising Obama, and book his trip north -- because that Azerbaijani mole is still on her way to Concord New Hampshire.

Why isn't she being threatened? Why should she escape the righteous wrath of Freedom-lovers? We have seen the cancer cell. To arms, portly gentleman, to arms!

Just kidding. I meant, To the keyboards, portly gentlemen. to the keyboards.

Edited November 1, 2012 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

Now, Bill, why did you throw me into your ranting blender?

--Brant

lil' ole innocent me

collateral damage?

[william.scherk]

Now, Bill, why did you throw me into your ranting blender?

Proximity only.

[william.scherk]

Searching out  OL references to Belarus, discovered some unalloyed flattery of Michael. This might as well serve as a set-up for the current situation facing Belarus.

On 10/24/2012 at 7:16 PM, william.scherk said:

Anyhow, "gotcha over substance game." I don't get it. I hope I rarely play simple gotcha for base motives. Gotcha can be satisfying now and again. When someone makes an obvious blunder (like me mis-citing Adam in place of MikeE) or other (factual claims made of fudge and wishes) then gotcha is its own reward for all parties: correction.

Michael, our epistemological challenges overlap all the time. In some areas of this huge world we each watch over, one or the other of us has more depth of knowledge. For you over me, that would be your world of music (a pointless aside, but I must say of those parts of your life that I might pine for or even envy your talents over my own are those of the years in concerts, recording, conducting, arranging, touring, dark-siding. These are the stories I relish from you, the darker more direct stories of achievement and corruption and love and life and danger. O Globo. And as I relish them, there is no way I could touch these stories in terms of truth, accomplishments, insights and punch. I would not even criticize them in least aspect, because you are a good writer who is his own best critic).

Where we align, I should think, is on the necessity of the reflective approach (in tanden with our emotional valences) to matters of fact, identification, integration, comprehension. Not on narrative or meta-narrative perhaps, but on the dogwork of checking facts and getting things straight, naming things and groups of things accurately, checking for black swans, that sort of thing.

You needn't think of me as a Progressive zombie on some matters, then. I am not trying to be your boogeyman, not in any other way than I want to be a boogeyman of reason. If I am challenging your arguments strongly sometimes it could be to your benefit, or the benefit of your writing and persuasive abilities. If I challenge your lack of specifics it is only to the benefit of your story and the clarity of your arguments. Them arguments and cancer/hitler arguments are weak, unreflective.

On back to the subject. I have nothing but a cynical bemusement towards the UN most of the time. A supranational convenience and an oddity, it has military forces under its command as peacekeepers around the world, sometimes dug in place for forty years, and it has a magic garden of acronyms and embroidered missions and commissions and directorates and yadda yadda on various subjects from the extremely boring and dire to the pellucid and tragic. There is a UN commission since disbanded or not for every freaking international conflict or question since day zero for the UN, mandates and treaties up the gazoo, a millions spiderwebs of more or less flabby directives and procedures. It has five grim-faced mandarins from the Big Five who actually run its business.

The ability to look into elections is one I want for the West (as it expands its borders as I hope it continues to do). I want detailed reports on Turkish elections (supervised by the EU), I want data from the recent Belarus election, and if they come by agreement with the ACRONYM, I will take it. We in the OSCE (we fifty-six nations) have found a treaty-like way to get the right to look closely at the other's democratic business and machinery. I do not see a downside to this intelligence from a Western point of view. In the years since the OSCE has done its business, see the numbers of states who have joined after demonstrating their democratic credentials (from Estonia to Malta) and the extent of the range of Western-style democracy to the East. NATO gains, solid alliances. At the edges, pretenders like Belarus and Kazakhstan against real Free World nations like the UK and Germany and Spain.

The ordinary folks of Belarus seem to have decided that the 'winner' is a fraud and a torturer -- and want him out.  Putin pledged support a couple of days ago. I wonder what a week of tomorrows will bring.  Lukashenko seems fairly determined to stay put on the throne.

The stupidest and most crankish and party-liner-dependent takes from the leftmost voices are trying to blame this on the CIA if not Soros. It's only got worse.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

11 hours ago, william.scherk said:

... some unalloyed flattery of Michael.

William,

Flattery is always good. Thank you.

I don't care for the alloy, though, the mixture being that I am a Dionysus to your Apollo.

I will grant that since 2012, my thinking skills have grown.

Even though you don't write much these days in terms of your own writing, which I attribute to some vigorous challenges to your articles of faith like manmade climate change, the buffoon Trump, the sanctity of Nate Silver's crystal ball, the nonexistence of pedophilia and blackmail among the elites, the nonexistence of a deep state, the evil powerful Russian monsters who can sway US presidential elections at will, the good intentions of Iran and junior varsity players like ISIS, even ringing Caroljane's ding-a-ling, you heroic man, you, I imagine your own thinking skills have grown.

At least I hope so.

Otherwise, that was a lot of suffering for nothing.

As to the Dionysus part, I have settled down a bit these last few years. And I miss it. So I'm getting the itch to get in trouble again. New stuff might be forthcoming.

I hope you are raising hell somewhere by doing stuff. And pissing off people.

It's fun and makes life worth living.

 

As to Belarus, I don't know much about it. Seeing that it is right on the border with Russia and the Ukraine, I imagine there is some righteous monkey-business like money laundering, contraband, oligarchs, and other fallout from the breakup and sacking of the USSR over there.

Michael

[william.scherk]

20 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Even though you don't write much these days in terms of your own writing, which I attribute to some vigorous challenges to your articles of faith like manmade climate change, the buffoon Trump, the sanctity of Nate Silver's crystal ball, the nonexistence of pedophilia and blackmail among the elites, the nonexistence of a deep state, the evil powerful Russian monsters who can sway US presidential elections at will, the good intentions of Iran and junior varsity players like ISIS, even ringing Caroljane's ding-a-ling, you heroic man, you, I imagine your own thinking skills have grown.

I plod along and try to stay out of poisonous exchanges where possible.

There is a smaller quorum at OL now and I don't wish to over-post. If my comments stimulate a few counter-comments, I am happy enough to elicit them and not nag on.

Quote

At least I hope so.

Otherwise, that was a lot of suffering for nothing.

As to the Dionysus part, I have settled down a bit these last few years. And I miss it. So I'm getting the itch to get in trouble again. New stuff might be forthcoming.

I'd be appreciative of more autobiographical stories and elaborations -- where you write about you and for you. I would be happy for lots of memoirish-ness "put to paper" ... this is where your genius lies, in the telling.

Quote

I hope you are raising hell somewhere by doing stuff. And pissing off people.

It's fun and makes life worth living.

I'm 62, and under heat warning in Chilliwack.

My actual articles of faith are pretty simple. I'd like to think our actual artices of faith overlap. The listing above as-if-mine makes me laugh.

I am always up for a "how did you come to believe [in] X, William?"

I think I may have lost heart in a few of the intractable disputes you have named. The personal rancour poisons healthy discussion.

The best is yet to come.

Quote

As to Belarus, I don't know much about it. Seeing that it is right on the border with Russia and the Ukraine, I imagine there is some righteous monkey-business like money laundering, contraband, oligarchs, and other fallout from the breakup and sacking of the USSR over there.

I have only foreboding for the people of Belarus. Belarus is part of a "Union State" with Russia, and essentially the last Soviet-style country in Europe. The people of Belarus don't have a big bitch with Russia or its peoples.

Right now they have a big bitch with their own guy. They are in a throw-the-bums-out moment.

I think they are doomed. Putin will help install a compliant military faction if Lukashenko falls.

Edited August 18, 2020 by william.scherk
Edited to seem less deranged

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

My articles of faith are decidedly on the side of reason -- in the sense of investigation, rigorous inquiry, protracted analysis

I think I may have lost heart ew of the intractable disputes you have named.

The best is yet to come.

William,

What do you think about watching the former Christian false memories wave of fanaticism in the US morph over the years into the Russian hoax, TDS and other fake news events that involve suspending reason?

 

(I'll throw in the transitional passage of the endless war for profit culture, but only in passing because I don't want to get distracted and stray from my point.)

Or how about the Christian authoritarians and bullies of yesteryear morphing into the leftwing authoritarians and bullies of today (like many in Big Tech, BLM and Antifa)?

Do you see the connections and common elements or do you think the issue is only about theocracy and blind faith induced by Christianity that can surge up into reason-corrupting fanaticism?

In other words, have you settled on the Christian goblin as the root of all evil and the ideal target for mockery, or has your thinking improved to encompass a bigger picture by watching over time the Christians become more or less reasonable as a group while watching the irrational and nasty stuff grow into large non-Christian groups that lean left or lean toward globalism?

You once told me you were interested in what caused the fanaticism of the Christian false memories wave, so much so you did a deep dive in studying it. Can you see that what you found there is the same thing as what is to be found in current leftie groups, fake news campaigns that go on for years and even certain scientific movements? 

(Apropos, there are elements on the right where this applies, too, but I am focusing on examples from the left and from the globalist religion ideology since these are the parts you openly support.)

And if you find what I do, can you put a name to it or break down the components?

I can, at least to some extent. I'm still studying it all.

At least I can say--with certainty--that one brain-numbing fanaticism that throws out common sense is not fixed by adopting another brain-numbing fanaticism that throws out common sense.

Can you, even when it hurts because one's sense of identity gets tied up in it all?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

I'd be appreciative of more autobiographical stories and elaborations -- where you write about you and for you. I would be happy for lots of memoirish-ness "put to paper" ... this is where your genius lies, in the telling.

William,

This is only an aside, but I cut down on that for a specific reason. I'm not afraid of exposing my inner life or the people in my past. I think I've proven that. But I stopped for the most part because I needed to focus on learning how to create fictional characters and events--that is, write fiction instead of memoir. I have an enormous block about that. Thankfully, a shitload of study (which has taken far too long to settle in my stubborn brain) is dissolving that block. 

(You should see what I've got outlined fiction-wise.  )

Once that is totally fixed and I get a few published fiction works under my belt, I will get back to writing stories from my life. There are many I have not yet told.

 

Main Block

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about when I say block: plot (or better, sequence of main events).

In a memoir, I don't have any trouble with this at all. I lived the events, so I don't have to dream them up. This happened, then that happened, then that happened and so on. Why? Well, because that's what actually happened. My only job is to select the events that are interesting, goose them up a bit with mood, emotions, colorful descriptions and so on, connect them with a theme and I've got a nice little piece that will entertain and, hopefully, be meaningful for a reader when relating it to his or her own life.

In fiction, when I have the whole universe to choose from, I get stuck. And when I use story templates, I get to a point where I lose interest because woodenness sets in. 

 

The Two Plots

I finally found a simple description of the two basic kinds of plot that changed everything for me. And I mean everything. When you read writing books, you get as many kinds of advice about plot as there are authors, but most talk about an outer development and an inner development.

But then I look at the literature and see that some characters, like James Bond, for instance, have no inner development (except when he lost his new bride to Goldfinger's bullet and his recovery process in the next book.) James Bond is basically what is called a "steadfast character," meaning he is the same at the beginning of the story as he is at the end. There is no character development. He kicks the ass of some really bad guys by using brains, ability and a high pain threshold, and enjoys himself enormously in the intervals between fighting them.

So how the hell do I fit that in trying to understand plot?

I can do this same kind of running into a brick wall with Aristotle's three part system, the hero's journey, the character place and problem system used by pantsers, and on and on. Meanwhile, the block grows...

Well, this concept of two types of plot blew that to smithereens. It gave me a foundation and starting point to use as criteria for what events and characters to choose and how to chose them. I got this clarity from a course on nonfiction writing. It's one of the The Great Courses called "Writing Creative Nonfiction" with the pretty and smart professor Tilar J. Mazzeo (who, incidentally, outside of writing instruction books on writing, writes history books, mostly about businesswomen in areas like champagne and perfume, but also writes about wine and food  ). I have learned more about fiction writing from this course than I have from many, many of the fiction writing books I already studied, although I admit, maybe all that study made me ripe enough for Mazzeo's ideas to break through.

Enough rambling. I can hear everyone reading this thinking, what are the two goddam types of plot?

OK... OK... They are linear and circular.

Happy?

 

(Mazzeo mentions a third, but it's basically story within story, like a frame story, but each element will still be one of the two kinds of plots.)

Linear plot: This is one event after another until a problem of some sort is dealt with. For an easy example of a linear plot, there is the mystery story. You need to find out who killed the corpse and go from event to event until that happens. Then you tie up the loose ends by arresting the dastardly villain, or he escapes, or you don't even find him and stop looking (the weakest lamest shit you can write, but it's still a way to tie up a loose end). The end.

Circular plot: This is a journey (physical or mental) where the protagonist leaves a familiar environment, does whatever he or she does out there in the unfamiliar, then returns, most often changed or bringing something that will change the familiar place. The hero's journey is a perfect circular plot.

The linear plot is better for event-driven stories and the circular plot is better for character-driven stories where the character changes. This is not a hard and fast rule, but things can get weird for the reader if, say, a character change is the point in a linear plot. The character is unhappy and tries this or that to fix it. Finally he has an epiphany. The end.  This story kinda needs a familiar anchor for the character (and reader) to relate to.

Obviously, these two plots can be intertwined in the same story and each main and secondary character can have his or her own plotline (which will be one of these two plots). And there are some other variations that can happen. But that's about it. Simple and applicable to all stories.

You have no idea how this cracked open the block in my head. It's even going to make my later memoir writing a hell of a lot better.

I have similar things I have learned involving all the different aspects of fiction writing. But that plot block was the most foundational.

Anyway, end of example.

 

Fun

Writing for me is fun, except when I have run into that damn block. (Have you noticed that I like to banter a lot? No block there...  ) Now that the block is dissolving, writing made-up stories is starting to be fun, too. Even when I think about using story templates. Now I know what to do with them.

I just realized that this post should be copied to the Writing Techniques section. I think I'll copy it to the write like Ayn Rand thread since I use this stuff to analyze her fiction.

Michael